Don’t Call It Photography – by David B. Jenkins

Guest Article by David B. Jenkins

Flatiron, Edward Steichen, Shot 1904, Printed 1909. Even at this time, many photographs were softer and more ‘painterly’ than was native to the medium

Uniquely among the arts, photography seems unable to be accepted for itself by its own practitioners. It is the redheaded stepchild of the arts, unloved by those who should love it most. It is in little danger from its critics, but may not survive its friends.

The new medium got off on the wrong foot at its birth, more than 175 years ago, because no one was sure just how it should be classified. Since it rendered three- dimensional reality in two dimensions on a flat surface, photography soon came to be regarded by painters and critics as a form of drawing, albeit inferior because it was achieved by mechanical and chemical means. Most photographers accepted this evaluation unquestioningly and set out in great earnest to prove that photography could compete with the older media by producing work that looked like drawing, painting, or engraving.

Morning Dew, 1908, by Clarence H. White. This is an excellent example of a photograph imitating ‘real art’ i.e. classical painted portraiture. Photographs were usually diffused at the time of capture (such as with a soft focus lens) or during printing (or both).

Part of the problem then and now is confusion of terminology; using the words medium and art as though they were interchangeable, when in fact they are not. Painting is a medium, as are sculpture, engraving, photography, and pottery. When practiced at a high level of competence within the context of its own inherent qualities, each medium is a craft which may become art when imbued with an indefinable presence imparted by the being of the artist himself.

Driven by the perceived inferior status of their medium and lusting for the many perks that our culture bestows on those who are considered artists, photographers have from early days aspired to be so recognized. Many photographers have testified that they chose photography because they couldn’t draw, didn’t have the patience to paint, or found photography easier, quicker, or more convenient. Thus, photography became a shortcut to artisthood for people who did not understand what it means to be an artist.

Unfortunately, artist is a designation no one can award himself. It is a title only history can bestow. Calling oneself an artist, as photographers and low-to-mid-level painters are wont to do, is a sure mark of the “wannabe.” Edward Weston, like many genuine artists, often referred to himself as a “worker” because he understood that his role was to work diligently at his craft. The composer Salieri undoubtedly thought of himself as an artist, and was so considered by his contemporaries. But history soon buried him, and even though I have a good education in music and am fairly well versed in the classics, I had never heard of him until he was exhumed for the movie Amadeus.

As distinguished from other visual media, the art of photography is primarily the art of seeing. A photograph is created at the instant of exposure, and nothing done to it afterward will make it art if it was not well seen to begin with. Throughout the history of the medium, the works that have had power, the works that have lasted, have been straight photographs. Their power and their art are in the photographer’s ability to see and to present his vision in a tangible form.

Nude (1952), by Bill Brandt. It may have echoes of Van Gogh, but this photograph plays to the strengths of the photographic medium

Moonrise, Hernandez (1941) – by Ansel Adams. This is a good example of an image from the f64 movement, whereby images were sharp everywhere. Such photographers sought to create powerful photographs by combining a skilled eye with well-honed darkroom skills.

Each of the arts is wonderful in its own way, and each has its role in enriching our lives. Each medium has its own inherent qualities, both strengths and limitations, which make it unique. It is only within the context of those inherent qualities that a medium can become art. Sculpture, for instance, is not made more “artistic” by slathering paint over a sculpted object, nor would painting be more acceptably “art” if the canvas were wadded into a ball to make it three-dimensional. A work in one medium cannot be transformed into art by making it an imitation of some other medium.

Image by Michael Largent. Is this still a photograph, or an illustration? Does the level of manipulation make it any more art or less photograph?

Photograph by Andreas Gursky. It’s possibly ironic that at a time when certain photographic approaches are especially well supported within the art world, this photograph is essentially a straight shot.

A pictorialist is one who thinks a photograph can be intrinsically improved by doing something to it after the fact. Compositing negatives was done a hundred years before Jerry Uelsmann, and the history of photography is replete with practitioners who used gum, bromoil, abrasion, and a hundred other techniques (and now computers) to make their photographs look like art. They have never understood that to make a photograph look like “art” does not in fact make it art. Photography is what it is, and any attempt to make it into something else robs it of its validity and its power. “….manipulation of pictures. I think it’s an abomination. I reject it all. I mean, it’s OK for selling corn flakes or automobiles or for taking pimples out of Elizabeth Taylor’s face, but it undermines the thing that photography is about…” (Elliott Erwitt).

Photograph by Elliot Erwitt. Photographs can be powerful and affecting without requiring anything beyond the slightly blurry capture of a poignant scene. Just as with blogging; ‘content is king’.

The essence of photography is that it is photographic. It is a picture made by the action of light reflected from something that has objective reality onto a sensitized surface. Light rays bouncing off something that is really there go through a lens and are recorded onto film, a sensor of some kind, or something not yet invented, but whatever it is, it is “writing with light.” The unique power of photography is derived from this direct connection to reality. When a photograph is altered, digitally or otherwise, it becomes no longer a photograph, but something else: perhaps a subset of painting or collage. Rauschenberg, for instance, creates work that I would categorize as collage. It may be artistic in itself, it may use photography as an element or a point of departure, but it is not photography.

Dorothea Lange kept a quotation by the English essayist Francis Bacon on her darkroom door: “The contemplation of things as they are, without error or confusion, without substitution or imposture, is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention.” As Fred Picker said in the March 1994 issue of Shutterbug,“This Koudelka (print by Czech photographer Joseph Koudelka) on the wall contains the most amazing combination of things that I know happened, because when he made that photograph there was no electronic imaging. Here are two horses, standing in a certain position, a boy sitting on a bicycle wearing an angel suit with angel wings, here’s an old lady scolding him, all in magnificent light and beautifully composed. Today, that picture could be made by some guy sitting in front of a computer. Knowing that would take all the wonder out of it.”

Photograph by David B. Jenkins

In actuality, it isn’t likely “some guy sitting in front of a computer” would make such a picture, because those who alter and/or combine photographs are limited by their imaginations. They can only do what they can conceive. But photography goes beyond human imagination. As novelist Tom Clancy has said, “The difference between fiction and non-fiction is that fiction has to make sense.” The magic of photography is that life holds so many amazing and wonderful things that are entirely unanticipated, unexpected, even unimagined in the deepest sense; that is — no one would ever have thought of such a thing happening. And then, suddenly, right out of the fabric of life, there it is. “I can do a beautiful illustration, but it doesn’t have that ‘instant of wonder’ that a photograph will have.” (Art Director Tony Anthony, quoted in “Photo District News,” February, 1987.) Photography shows us things that lie beyond our imagination and compel our amazement because they really happened. It revels in the beauty, the mystery, and the strangeness of life. It is the most powerful purely visual medium ever created.

And yet, what a sad, unloved child of the arts photography is! Her own practitioners, who should love her most are so often seduced by the siren song, “Artist! Artist! You can be an artist!” that they trample her heedlessly in their mad scramble to call their works “art”. Something of great value is being thrown away, and most of the people who are doing it so casually do not have a clue.

Certainly photographs altered in some kind of processing software can be an art form. Call it imaging, maybe, or whatever you like . . .but please, don’t call it photography.

The photographer with a computer has achieved his dream: he has become an artist.

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Comments

The Koudelka picture but also the “laughing horse” (do horses laugh?) are nice examples of how photography can be used to create expression from intuitive perception. There is neither message nor metaphor to them; how to put into words what they are “about”? And yet they invite the viewer to contemplate them – there is something surreal or strange about them, something odd, something out of place. There is a book called “Camera Lucida” by the French philosopher Roland Barthes, in which he claims that a successful picture has what he calls a “punctum”. The punctum is defined as a feature which kind of “pierces” the perception of the viewer, and stands out from the pure informational content of the picture.

I also believe that the “photography can’t be art since anyone can press the shutter” doesn’t hold water since art and craft took different roads over 150 years ago.

Tom, your post makes a good complement to this recent one by Matt Payne: http://www.mattpaynephotography.com/blog/2018/2/Pretty-Little-Lies Matt does a nice job of fleshing out one part of your argument: the various degrees of manipulation. You and Matt are both asking people to think about where their own personal line is. As I’m sure you’re well aware, Adams’ Moonrise is extremely heavily manipulated; the version you’re showing in this post looks like one of his later, much darker versions. Adams is definitely not on the left side of Matt’s spectrum (the Purist who thinks he or she is representing an unmanipulated reality).

I liked your piece especially for its attention to the distinctiveness of photography relative to other media. I do think though that photography as art (or not) is not as black and white (sorry, couldn’t resist) as you make it. For me, art is a human making that has as its central intention communicating with or engaging other humans about something. Not every human making that exists to communicate with other humans is art. A photograph can be made for propaganda, for selling a product, or for documenting a crime scene. These photographs are normally not made to be art. That doesn’t mean they can’t also be art, but art is not their primary purpose. I think that’s where a lot of the confusion enters the conversation: so much photography is not meant to be art, but can look like photography that is meant to be art.

Combining the two questions you’re asking (when is photography “art”?, and how much manipulation is OK?) to me confuses things somewhat. Some artists use photographs as elements of their art, often combining photographic images with other media. Some artists make the photograph and what photography can uniquely do their medium. Both are fine, and both can be art. Where it gets messy and nasty is that middle space you are worried about: people who give the impression of doing the latter, when they’re actually doing the former. I have no problem with photo-manipulation when it’s clear that’s what’s happening, but I don’t like or enjoy the deceptive variety (e.g., landscapes that never existed and can’t exist, but are presented as real).

Thanks for thinking and writing about these things. There aren’t enough sites like yours that are mostly about photography rather than camera technology.

Hi Rob,the credit for the article goes to David, with not a single edit of any kind from me. I only selected a few images (including one each from him and his friend Michael) to illustrate (as best I could) the points he was making. I thought the article was very interesting and absolutely worth sharing and discussing. I will engage my brain and add my own thoughts to these comments, hopefully later today.

My apologies David! It does say “By David…” right there in the by-line. What fooled me was Tom has been profiling various photographers lately… I just assumed he was profiling a photographer named David and making some points about art and photography.

This is a very interesting point you are making and my attempt to comment on it may not be eloquent enough to count.

I think your conclusion is too harsh and limiting. If I understand you correctly, you suggest that by choosing a photographic medium one should adopt limitations it imposes i.e. anything that transcends the pure physics (optics/chemistry/fotons to electrons etc) is not true and thus should not be called photography. It is very purist approach, isn’t it? Where do you draw the line? Isn’t choosing B&W conversion instead of colours already crossing this line or not? or if you increase the contrast too much?

I feel that, especially in this digital age, the boundaries between mediums like photography or illustration are blurring too much to try to contain it. Your comparison to paining or drawing is interesting but these have basically not evolved since ages, still relying on physical attributes. But would you call digital paining a paining? or is it illustration? same for drawing?

All in all, I am sure somebody with a better command of words will be able to express it more clearly, but in essence I have much more flexible approach to the issue. I can fully admire artistry of somebody who captures the “decisive moment” but I can also appreciate a great composite, like some of Erik Almas images. Can we still call it a “photograph”? I don’t know. If all elements were captured separately on camera and not rendered, I guess we can still do it.

Looks like I’ve opened a can of worms, haven’t I? Well, good! That’s what I intended to do. Use these thoughts to help clarify for yourself the direction you want to take in your work. I don’t believe that photography in itself is art, but clearly, some photographs are art, and some photographers are artists. Look at the history of photography and the photographs that are now considered art. Virtually all of them are straight photographs, and the overwhelming majority originated as documentary photography.

This isn’t rocket science. All I’m saying is that photography is photography, and it’s a very fine thing in itself. Let it be what it is, and if you want to make something else out of your photographs, please do so with my blessing. Just don’t call it photography.

Hi Dave, I think my view is a very simple one: I have no desire to hammer the ‘artist’ stamp down upon my photography. I take photographs. I think I am ‘somewhat creative’ (but also very analytical) as a person. Most of all, I am interested in things and want to understand more about them. Whether I am engaged in photography or art doesn’t enter my thoughts when I am thinking about what I want to do photographically speaking. That’s always driven by what I find interesting. I can certainly see that if a person starts by considering who they are, or what they are as an artist or photographer, that might have a profound impact on how they go about things. Considering who or what you are as a person… well, that’s a very different matter and a very important one for every photographer to consider, perhaps.

I completely agree with you that photography, as a ‘straight medium’ is where it is strongest. It doesn’t need the frills, bells and whistles. We don’t need to shout that our photography is art for it to be valued by others, or ourselves. Ironically, you could argue that some of the photography that is most highly regarded within the wider art world these days is some of the most direct. This direct, matter of factness is sometimes accompanied by deeply conceptual artist statements designed to lift otherwise dull-as-ditchwater work. Photo-illustrations, blended images etc may be very popular in amateur and professional (commercial) circumstances and in popular culture, but they are nowhere to be seen within the photographic and art establishment’. We might even say that there is a huge divergence between what some ‘laypeople’ consider to be ‘photography that is art’ and what the art establishment would regard as the same, with an ocean between the two.

We discussed Burtynsky’s work and he is a good example of a prolific photographer whose ‘matter of fact’ work is held in high regard within the art world: he’s more than a footsoldier, but not a Gursky in terms of prints being sold for super-money. Burtynsky is arguably doing a contemporary version of what Koudelka has done with his ‘Chaos’ compilation. Gursky isn’t entirely dissimilar, although his Rhine II is the coin flipped: the Rhine as we ‘like to imagine it to be/wish it were’.

To come back to the issue of titles and mantles, I think being a photographer is a wonderful thing. It doesn’t need any embellishment. We don’t need to be something else too (an artist), because it doesn’t change what we produce and it is that which is of paramount importance. Why anyone would feel otherwise, when photographs sell for $millions, I have no idea. Also, I will now bang a drum I occasionally bang: how many well known photographers refer to themselves as artists on their websites or in their books? None. Zero. Not that I can think of. It means that use of the term ‘fine art photography’ has become a term associated with mediocrity, or worse, within photography itself. I would advise any photographer to avoid it like the plague, due to the desperation and self-aggrandisement it suggests. I know that a great many photographers think it’s something you need to say if you’re serious about your work, but that’s cultural. I think the best solution is and always has been lots of great photos. Just photos. And the word ‘photographer’. What else is needed?

An interesting article with a clear point of view. One comment that left me wondering, though, was: “which may become art when imbued with an indefinable presence imparted by the being of the artist himself.” What do you mean by ‘the being of the artist’? Could you explain this in the context of the Brandt or Koudelka photograph? Do you mean something like Barthes’s ‘punctum’ as a sort of direct and essential communication of the ‘artist’?

Pierre Manzoni explored the connection between art production and human production, and his definition of art was precisely in this direction of the presence of the artist, to the extent that art was what the ‘artist’ said it was – which was, conveniently, anything he produced. Manzoni’s ballons filled with his own breath and his infamous cans of ‘Artist’s Shit’ certainly contained something of the ‘being of the artist himself’. These have sold quite well in the art world.

I can’t explain it, Robert, because it’s indefinable. But when it’s not there, it is conspicuous by its absence.

This business of art being whatever an artist says it is is bogus. Who says he’s an artist? Does he claim that for himself? If so, why should we believe him? “Artist’s Shit” is just shit packaged for the gullible. Only an intellectual could be stupid enough to believe a urinal is art because Duchamp signed it, or feces is art because Manzoni says it is. Really and truly, the emperor is stark naked.

One of my current favorite quotes: “Skill without imagination is craftsmanship. Imagination without skill is modern art.”

I love the Manzoni example ( and the Duchamp) because they are both part of the spectrum of the endless debate ‘what is art?’ You say they are bogus (so do many) but I’m not sure that really covers the problem well enough. There are countless attempts that try to define art – I remember my old aesthetics professor spending endless ,well-paid hours droning on about ‘objective’ aesthetics (he published a number of tomes on this and was quite celebrated for a while) but when it came to it, you just believed in his ‘system of aesthetic constructions’ or you didn’t, hence my challenge to you – explain what you mean. Yet you decline to do so with words about ‘indefineability’, and it’s ‘conspicuous by its absence’. Can you explain to me how this is any different from the ‘I am the arbiter’ position of either Manzoni or Duchamp or indeed the elaborate aesthetic system that my old professor constructed?

You have kindly provided excellent examples in the Brandt and the Koudelka, but do not want to (or can’t because of indefineability) use them for your argument. That makes me think that for you they are art because something in them appeals to you.

As an additional point, is all of Brandt’s or Koudelka’s work ‘art’ or just the ones that do something to you?

This was very eye-opening and thought-provoking! I’d never fully considered the difference between art and photography. I tend to believe they are the same, in the sense that they are both born from the desire to create something meaningful. I suppose what makes art “art” is the emotion. If a photograph conveys emotion–whether altered or unaltered–I would absolutely consider it art. The fact that photos are “real” doesn’t make them any less a work of art, and if anything, it makes them more so. A documentary can be art. A speech can be art. An actual, physical place can be art. Perhaps revealing the truth is in fact what makes true art “art.”

I have no answers for you, Robert. Art is subjective. I know what I think, and I have written it. My whole point is not to debate the nature of art, but rather to defend photography as a thing of its own. Is it art? I don’t know and I don’t care. It’s clear that some photographs are art, although not everyone will agree which ones, because art is subjective. But just let photography be photography and enjoy it for the wonderful thing that it is without trying to make it something else.

I don’t think I will ever be considered an artist, but I make photographs I like and I like the photographs I make. To me that’s the only thing that really matters. If other people like them too, so much the better. Most of my photographs are pretty ordinary, though.

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The Author

Award-winning photographer, ex-soldier and father of two, Thomas Stanworth has spent over a decade working and photographing in trouble spots from Sierra Leone to Afghanistan. His work has been exhibited in the US, UK, Europe and Asia. Read More…

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